Chapter Text
O' Goddess, I pray for mercy for the soul of the rebels. I pray for salvation for the tormented people of this kingdom. And I pray that if there is ever a next time, if I am worthy for a reincarnation, that this fate between me and Emperor Toneri be severed. That this twisted destiny between me and the Saintess Shion end with my death. Let us never find each other. Let us forever miss each other. Let our path never cross. And...if love is ever in my fate, then I ask for a hand that is warm and kind, a heart that is loving and loyal, and a mind that will preserve my safety and happiness. I desire nothing more than this. Neither wealth nor fame will I ask. Simply a love that is true. A soulmate that will never betray me...
Hiashi of Hyuuga Duchy paced before the door of his daughter's room. His daughter and heiress, Hinata, had fallen into the water of their pond in the middle of winter after a meeting with her fiance, Prince Toneri. It was also their first meeting yet somehow the foolish boy had managed to push her into the water after almost falling due to a patch of ice when she offered her hand to help him. It was supposed to be her 7th birthday and their first official meeting after being promised to each other when she was 3. He wished he could do something to punish the fool but he was still a Prince, even as far removed from the throne as he was, so he could only ban the boy from coming over for the foreseeable future.
This arrangement wasn't his idea. It was the Emperor's and he cannot annul it without a reason that not even the Emperor could ignore. But nothing came to mind. And now his poor daughter was fighting pneumonia. Hiashi sighed as the priests worked on the girl. She had gone under and had not waken for the past week. He was getting worried, afraid that she would be taken from him. Hanabi had only turned 2 and he feared that the Emperor's attention will turn to her. As selfish as that sounded, he couldn't let his youngest suffer. Not that he wanted Hinata to suffer but Hanabi was so young.
Hinata was young too...
He hated this, having to choose one of either to sacrifice to the Royal Family. He knew that the arrangement was made to control his House. But what can he do? If he insisted to refuse, the Emperor will be displeased and he will have to deal with a fall out that can be avoided if only he gave up one daughter. War was the last thing he wanted for his people.
The door opened and he looked up to see the priest smiling, "How is she?"
The priest, a kindly old man named Hiruzen, answered, "Her body is strong. Though...I must warn you,"
Hiashi felt ice dropping in his belly, "Warn me...of what?"
Hiruzen frowned, "I have never seen anything like it. The reason she fell so ill isn't just because of the pneumonia but also..."
Hiashi scowled at the hesitation, "Out with it!"
Hiruzen sighed, "Her magic...it is drained. I have never seen anything like this. It is as if every single drop had simply disappeared. Which is strange because...because such a thing only happened when something required that much power to cast. She isn't summoning anything or casting any spell. And for a child so young, I doubt that she is involved in any strange experiment like those madmen in the Magic Tower..."
Hiashi's face turned pale, "What...?"
Hiruzen looked at him, "I would suggest requesting the Adventurer's Guild to investigate if you want this matter to remain a secret. However...with her station...I'm afraid it won't stay secret for long, the poor child..."
Hiashi pursed his lips before pulling a drawstring wallet, "Here. Consider this my...donation to the temple,"
Hiruzen frowned at the money but accepted it with a grumble, "Such a thing really shouldn't need payment. It should be my honor to give you aid in the name of the Goddess,"
Hiashi waved his hand, "It matters not. I do not need those vultures to come to my home, demanding answer as to why I am not doing my duty to support you priests for your troubles,"
Hiruzen shook his head as he followed Hiashi to the door, "I must say...I do not like the direction that the High Priest is taking. It feels...insincere and greedy,"
Hiashi glanced at the man, "Hiruzen. You are a good man. But good man should keep his head down in the storm of politic. Otherwise, you will be uprooted and I don't need a greedy priest coming to my home when I could use a priest whose opinion I respect to attend to my family's need,"
While Hiashi warned the old priest about keeping his head down so he may live for a long time, inside the silent room, the girl under the thick blanket shifted. Sweat covered her brows as she weakly tossed and turned. Tears fell down from her closed eyes while she fought the heavy blanket covering her. After a few moments, she gasped with a choked scream, moonlight eyes wide with horror and fever before falling back asleep.
Outside, the snow muffled the sound of the world as the seed of spring slept beneath the white blanket...
When the small 7 years old finally wake up, she found herself inside a dark room. She sat up quietly and curled in on herself before climbing off the bed to sleep under it. Everything was too open and she didn't dare look at the door. In her mind, the scent of mold and the stench of her own waste haunted her olfactory perception. Her ears can still hear the sound of war and the screams of people who was caught in between two different powers fighting for control. She kept waiting for the door the burst open and for magic to grab her like a doll on a string. Her body twitched with remembered pain and terror. It took a long while to fall back to sleep...though it was no reprieve for her guilt and regret.
Hiashi opened his door when Watari, his butler, informed him that Hinata had disappeared. He rushed to her room, fearing the worse, when he saw the maids trying to coax her from under her bed. Frowning, he asked, "What is going on here?"
The maid nearest to him, Chihiro, answered, "We found Milady but she refused to come out from under the bed. I think she is delirious from nightmares and thought herself still dreaming,"
Hiashi felt worry gnawing in his chest but refused to show it. Nightmares. Hinata has been suffering from constant nightmares ever since she fell sick. Putting away his dignity as the Duke, he lowered his body and peered under the table. What he saw broke his heart.
Her eyes were wide with pure terror and disbelief.
Her face was as pale as the dead.
She was trembling as she curled as tightly as she could under the bed.
He reached out to her, "Hinata...come here..."
Hinata shook her head, her trembling was so bad that he could hear her teeth chattering. Hiashi didn't give up. He tried to fit his frame under the bed but somehow that only made it worse as she started crying but it was the silent kind. The kind that he knew learned from fear. He had seen many things during his time on the frontline and when investigating crimes in his Duchy before taking over as the Duke. One of them was investigating illegal slavery ring and he had seen that expression on the trafficked slaves. But to see it on his own daughter's face...how was he supposed to feel about it?
So he pulled back, trying to telegraph his movements as clearly as possible so that she knew that he meant her no harm. She calmed a little when he sat outside on the ground beside her bed. He didn't know what to think. All he knew was that something was wrong with his daughter but he can't force her to come out and speak. All he could do was wait for her to come out on her own. He needed to let her regain a sense of control. So he breathed in and ordered, "Pull away. Place her food where she can see it. But until she feels comfortable, you are not to attend to her or force her to interact. Let her come to you..." He tried recalling the things he learned from the psychiatrist who worked on the freed slaves and began applying it on Hinata...his own daughter. He stood up and looked at the seemingly innocent bed, "Let her feel safe..."
Hinata...he wondered who did this to her?
After the door closed, Hinata slowly crawled out. She looked around, trying to get a sense of this illusion. She was sure that she had been killed. She was pushed out of the tower where they trapped her and had felt the spears of the passing rebels piercing her body, snuffing out whatever life left in her. She remembered that one of them was the spear of a banner bearer, her blood soaked through the banner depicting the emblem of House Hyuuga.
She trembled as she pressed her hands on her chest. She can't really feel the pain back then, her mind was already shutting out reality as she sent her final prayer to the Goddess. But now, the phantom pain of being stabbed through multiple spears echoed through her body. She stumbled to the nearest corner to vomit. After she was done heaving out whatever food was in her, she looked up to see her reflection on the window and past that, the nostalgic view of her favorite garden...blanketed in snow.
Hinata stared at it in disbelief. She had not been home after her marriage to the Emperor. He had locked her up soon after their wedding night...not that he touched her. He did something...worse.
But...
The face looking back was small and delicate in a way that only children's features could be. Her hair was still black and shining as it fell like a banner down her scalp and around her face instead of ghostly white spider threads that had barely covered her head. Her cheeks were plump with health instead of sunken and ghoulish. Her eyes were shining like marbles instead of the single dull eye of her last appearance in the cracked mirror left in her tower to mock her. Her hands were soft and her fingers graceful instead of the crooked shape from constantly being broken and healed for amusement using magic. Her lungs felt tired but it was more than how she could barely breathe after being poisoned via gas and left barely alive. Her ankles...her tendons weren't torn from being bitten by their man eating pet dogs.
Hinata felt tears falling down her face as she stared at her reflection. Her ears, inherited from her mother's elven ancestry, still pointed outward gracefully instead of the torn flesh that she was left with after Shion ripped them off, claiming to make her more human. The spots of sickness and the weakness of diseases...gone. Her broken bones, healed wrongly due to no one being there to set it right...gone. She still have both eyes where before, one was torn out to be used in a ritual by Shion. She felt healthy. She felt strong. She felt...like herself before it all went wrong. All the scars...all the aches...all the marks that they had left on her for 'fun'...
They were gone.
Yet...what they left still marked her mind and heart
The window broke and she grabbed the broken glass in her hand, slicing through delicate skin and bleeding out the blood that they claimed to be dirty, and pointed it at her own neck. She didn't think. She only acted. Because what she was seeing couldn't be true. Because this so called paradise must be nothing more than another trap. Another form of twisted game to further break her. Well, she refused to play it.
After all that she couldn't save...
After all that she couldn't stop...
She deserved death.
The slice was true. Her blood spilled all over the broken window. The door opened to a scream of a maid who had wanted to check what was broken. Hinata stared at the ceiling of her childhood bedroom, sure that this was just an illusion of her mind. Her heart was numb yet...when another face appeared, healing magic spilling from his hands, eye wide with terror and disbelief...her tears fell.
She couldn't save her father.
She couldn't save her people.
She still remember how her little sister's ragged small body with her legs and arms broken being presented to her after the young girl died from the abuse that the bandits had apparently visited upon her. She can still smell her father's flesh being cooked as he was burned alive under her tower. She can still feel the way splinters dug into her fingers as she clawed at the door, begging mercy for her family when she heard the 'result' for their judgment. All she received were laughter. Mocking and dismissive. Like she was the greatest entertainment to ever be performed before them. Her heart died that day as her faith in goodness forever tarnished.
And just like that, her House was razed to nothing.
"Why did you do this? Why this torment? Had I known of your love for each other, I would have stepped away,"
"Why? Because just you stepping away will put a stain on our reputation. The Saintess cannot be impure or flawed. She must be perfect and kind. And do you honestly think that the people will accept Shion if they learned that she was the other woman in our engagement? No. I must protect her. And for that, you must fall. You must play the part of the perfect Villainess. And to drive this fact into the people's skull, they must be utterly disgusted of you. So...your family must suffer. You should rejoice, really, my Empress. After all, you are doing a great service for me the Emperor,"
"But I...I didn't do any of that..."
"Exactly! That is why we found a perfect replacement! Which is why you are here, in this tower, to be forgotten. As far as the world know, Empress Hinata have gone mad with jealousy and did all these to torment the poor Saintess Shion. And as far as the world know, I am just a devoted husband who can't understand why his dear wife won't believe that he and the Saintess are just friends...perfect, isn't it?"
No matter how insane it was, or how illogical her actions were, it was all labeled as her being madly in love with the Emperor. And the Emperor grew more and more disappointed in his Empress until he has no choice but to execute her for her crimes. Said that he had taken years to uncover all that she had done to incarcerate her, thus why he didn't do anything. And he didn't act for so long because he had 'loved' his Empress. Yet that love was slowly drained by his disappointment in her and slowly he fell for the Saintess, yet his oath of marriage held him back from acting on his own heart's desire. Thus he and the Saintess will play the part of star crossed lovers being separated by a woman mad with jealousy.
Hanabi's death? She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Her father's execution? He was the mastermind behind the series of kidnapping that had plagued the nation for the past few years.
And so on and so forth, he will reveal it all to be her work from the shadow. Why? Because she was jealous. Jealous that he had a meeting with her sister during a party. Angry that her father won't defend her in public. As far as the people knew, he was just escorting Hanabi as a good brother-in-law. As far as the people cared, she had attacked the Saintess unprovoked and her father had defended her rival in love. So she ruined her own House, killed her own family in cold blooded manipulation.
And so the story supposedly go...
Hinata woke up from her nightmare to see her 'father' sleeping on the edge of the bed beside her, his hand holding onto hers tightly. She looked over herself and wondered what the game this time was about. She had fallen for such a trick before only for it to be cruelly revealed as nothing more than illusions. Shouldn't they know that she won't fall for it anymore? Or did they think that she had fallen so low that she would believe in their supposedly perfect lie?
Hiashi woke up the moment she pulled away from him. As he watched her walk towards the balcony, he stood up and grabbed her. She didn't fight and that was worse. It was as if she was waiting for something to happen. Her eyes were dead and her actions were full of listless resignation. It was as if she had given up living.
Hiashi trembled and hugged her close, "Hinata...I don't know where you are right now but know this...I love you. I know I am always busy and that sometimes I asked too much of you but I do love you. If I had done you wrong, I am sorry. But please...treasure your life more...I beg of you...please, my Princess..."
The past few days had been nothing but a nightmare for him. After waking up to another suicide attempt from Hinata, he had given up sleeping in his own room and doing his work in his office. Instead, he had lingered around her. He worked outside her door. The moment he heard her awake, he watched her quietly only to have to step in when she tried hurting herself.
Right now, her head was wrapped in bandages after she ran head first towards the wall in an attempt to crack her skull open. Her determination to die had frightened him that Hiashi cannot do anything other than stay with her. He tried to communicate with her, whispering softly as opposed to his normal baritone control. He tried singing her lullaby. He tried sharing stories of their time with his wife Hanami before her complicated birth. He told her about Hanabi raising hell for her nanny.
But nothing worked.
Her eyes remained dull and dead.
Her face stayed cold and unresponsive.
She only wanted to die and Hiashi was as his wits end.
In the end, he held her and cried, questioning what went wrong. How falling into the pond had broken her will to live. How her bout with pneumonia had changed his daughter so much that he couldn't recognize her. So he cried, afraid of what had changed in her. Afraid of what he will need to do if she won't stop.
He pleaded, "Help me...Hanami..."
Hinata was lost in her head and in trapped in the horror of a world she left behind. She believed everything around her to be lies made to torment her with guilt and regret. Yet...when not even pain could convince her that this was real, the feeling of warm rain falling on her ignited something within. She looked at the warm droplets. She can't remember the last time she felt such a thing. Her own tears had long dried, despite the amount that feel from her eyes ever since she woke to this illusion of peace and care. But these...these weren't hers.
Hinata looked up to see a familiar face, one where she last saw warped with disbelief and disappointment so sharp it cut crumbling with desperation and helplessness. Her mind fell silent at the unreal sight. In her memory, her father had always been a strong man.
Hyuuga Hiashi was a man most known for his pride and discipline. He was cold and arrogant. No matter what happened, his pride was one thing that cannot be taken from him. Even when he was dragged to the pyre, his pride didn't leave him. Truth propped his spine even in death. He bowed to no one...no. He bowed once. To death. When her mother died, that was the one and only time she had seen him bowed his head. She never mentioned it to anyone. Not even when she most naive and most trusting of her tormentors. Hiashi's humble defeat before the absolute wasn't a moment she will share with anyone...ever.
This alone, the sight of his humility and helpless broke her out of her mind. She reached up and touched the single proof that her father wasn't a statue of pride and discipline but a man. Alive and made of flesh and blood. Feeling rather than his unfeeling reputation. His tears...
That was all the proof she needed that this was no illusions.
Hiashi blinked as Hinata smiled a broken smile as her small hands reached up to wipe his tears. After she was done wiping them away, she touched his face like she had not seen him in a lifetime. Her smile was soft, almost disbelieving, but warm and full of love. She then pressed her hand against his chest before curling tighter against him, her ear pressing up against his heart.
Then she sighed as if relieved of something heavy.
For a moment, they didn't move. Then Hiashi panicked, thinking that she had passed away in his arms. But then she sighed again, her hold on his front tightening upon feeling his movement. Her expression was like one that was made upon returning home after decades away in the harsh and unforgiving world. Hiashi breathed easier and gathered her close. As he climbed into her bed, he forget his role as Duke and simply exist as her father.
That night, he promised to protect her even if he had to fight the whole world.
He didn't know why or who had broken his daughter. The girl who smiled despite the pressure her placed on her shoulders, who worked hard to be the perfect older sister to Hanabi because she didn't want her little sister to miss the affection of a mother, who secretly trained her dance steps and her piano lesson when she thought the others too busy to notice her efforts so that she won't bring him shame, his little girl who only smiled under the expectations because she loved him too much to burden him...
If he ever learned who broke her, he will burn the world to erase them.
That night, while Hinata finally found hope and accepted that she had turned back time after her death when she was 35, another heart stirred. Deep in the town where a man sat at the table reading through reports from people who had kept an eye on the Hyuuga Duchy, he tightened his hold on the documents.
His long ears, mark of his race, twitched as he read the anomaly happening inside the duchy. He tapped his finger on the table, golden brow twitching as a thought came over him.
He whispered in a tongue that didn't exist in that world, "Could it be?"
A deep voice rumbled inside his very soul, "Well, you happened. Then it must be true,"
A voice purred, "Why wonder? We have gone through too much madness to hesitate at this,"
He hummed as he burned the reports to nothing before standing up to look out the window of the Guild Master's office of the Adventurer's Guild. He had lived his whole life meddling with history so that she won't have to suffer. So that when they met, all that was left to do was to live a life of blissful marriage. But what was the point if her heart had been broken?
He looked at his hand. Sharpening a nail into a razor sharp claw, he cut himself. The wound didn't bleed. Golden motes of ether slowly but surely filled in the wound. He wasn't a normal existence. Nothing about him was normal so who was he to say that his soulmate was normal?
He looked at the moon, thinking of her eyes that once glowed like the moon but slowly dimmed into dull white unpolished rock before dying a cruel death. He remembered the way her prayer called on him, pulling him out of the void of nothingness. He remembered their first meeting and the endless wait that came after.
He clenched his fist and kissed his soulmate ring, promising;
"That won't be your end. Not anymore. I promise... Hinata,"